Just before his second election win, President Barack Obama was caught by a surreptitiously live microphone whispering confidences in the ears of the then Russian President Dmitri Medvedev. The gist of the whisper, later broadcast by eavesdroppers in the US media, was an Obama promise to be “more flexible” in his second term in office. We may...

KIEV — The latest push for peace in Ukraine appeared moribund on Thursday after initial talks failed to agree when the warring sides should meet again to try ending their eight-month conflict. Negotiations mediated by European and Russian envoys in the Belarussian capital Minsk broke up after more than five hours on Wednesday...

MOSCOW: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Ukraine’s pursuit of Nato membership posed a danger to European security and that the West was using Kiev’s bid to join the Atlantic alliance as a way to fuel confrontation between Russia and Ukraine. The Kiev parliament’s renunciation of Ukraine’s neutral status this...

VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis yesterday condemned the “brutal persecution” of minorities by Islamic State insurgents and said the joy of Christmas was marred by the suffering of children in the Middle East and around the world. Tens of thousands of people flocked to St. Peter’s Square to hear the Argentine pope deliver his “Urbi et Orbi” (to...